Insert expletive here! I'm at Bilster Berg,
Germany's first all-new circuit in 70 years. Its most challenging comer towers
above the entrance road, the massive elevation change visible through the
catch fencing. No other bit of Tarmac this side of the Nordschleife has felt
more intimidating. And to top it all, the car I'm about to fling around this
narrow, foreboding track is the potent new Porsche 911Turbo S - all 412kW of
it.
Whatever
the conditions, the 911 Turbo S delivers all-round brilliance
Lined up in pit lane ready to launch, I settle
into a 991-familiar cockpit and punch the starter. Porsche has made it easy to
enter full battle mode. Just press the Sport Plus button on the centre console.
The throttle map turns sabre sharp and the PDK twin-clutch gearbox's shift
speed and change-up points prepare for violence. In the rear-view mirror, I
watch as the rear spoiler raises 7smm and angles forward seven degrees while
the front lip unfurls by hydraulic inflation, as if sticking out a tongue,
goading the opposition to match its cleverness. Launch!
What follows is a blur of off-camber
comers, blind apexes, a scintillating chicane and a long sweeping left that
rewards commitment with searing exit speed. This is Bilster Berg... and it's
brilliant. By lap three my palms are drenched. One at a time I wipe them on my
jeans. This Turbo's searingly, properly, heroically fast. Forgive the adverbs,
but no mere metaphor would suffice.
The
Porsche 911 Turbo S got small bags only up front
I'm concentrating with all the intensity
of a tightrope-walker, not because the 991 Turbo S requires it but because it's
so accomplished, egging me to go faster, push harder, trust more.
Faster-acting, electro-hydraulically
controlled four wheel drive with the added ability to send (an unlikely) 100%
of the torque to the now water-cooled front axle transfer case, Porsche Torque
Vectoring Plus, active four-wheel steering, increased torsional rigidity, a
100mm longer wheelbase and wider-than ever tracks translate into unyielding
stability. Even ill-timed brake or accelerator inputs deep into the corkscrew
corner complex are just intelligently dealt with. I know from earlier on, when
a colleague tried his utmost to purposefully unsettle the car, that it would
take severe stupidity to out-fox these electronics. I'd suggest you'd need to
have a massive ego and a matching bank balance - or possess Walter Rohrl-like
talent - to drive it as fast around here with the traction management off.
The
outlets either side of the exhausts have become a Turbo trademark
Ceramic composite brakes, standard on the
S, are immense both in size (410mm up front and 390mm at the rear) and stopping
power, working superbly and without complaint right from a cold start. As for
the twin-turbocharged 3.8-litre flat-six engine, it has lost that somewhat
sadistic sewing machine sound for a fuller, bassier baritone. Also lost, but
only in press conference translation, was how the Germans accredited the new
911 Turbo with the ability to 'petrify other sports cars' calling it 'as
poisonous as a thoroughbred racing machine'. I suppose with power outputs of
383kW for the non-S and 412kW for the Turbo S model, it is fair to say they
have more venom. Boost pressures are 1.0 and 1.2 bar respectively, with both
benefiting from an additional 0.15 bar for 20 seconds of over boost.
